“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” A famous quote from Karl Marx and a rallying cry of Socialism. But a western materialist perspective will sneer at these ideas. And point to the triumph of the capitalist system over the multiplicity of failed communist ones. Maybe so, but materialist capitalism is in danger of ruining the planet, and has created huge wealth imbalances into the bargain. One thing I discovered recently reading Debt by anthropologist David Graeber, is that most tribal societies did live according to some form of this socialist maxim. So, if we are all living on this planet together maybe we should start thinking about humanity being one tribe, one family. From that perspective, is our current materialist capitalist ‘utopia’ really the best way for us all to live? Marx made his statement within the context of a world of abundance. But what does abundance mean, and how can we all have it in a finite world?
Much of this debate falls on our definitions. The dictionary definition of abundance is, “a very large quantity of something”. This definition does not say what that something is of course, we could be abundant in many different things. Nevertheless, most people today define this ‘something’ in material terms, and that usually means money. So straight away we can see what some of the problem is. As we all compete to be abundant in this finite commodity called money, wealth imbalances are inevitable. And because we do not build in the true cost of degrading the planet whilst we pursue monetary abundance, we are destroying the planet too. In fact, the way we are going, the true cost is that we won’t have a habitable planet anymore. To change our society in a positive manner one thing we really need to do is to redefine abundance.
So, let’s explore this as a new definition, abundance: the ability to do what you need to do when you need to do it. By defining it in this way we are turning abundance from a thing into a process. And this is the critical difference, life is not about the accumulation of things, it is about doing and experiencing. We do not take any of our material things with us when we are done with our physical lives. Just look at the grave goods left in Tutankhamun’s tomb. Or tell me if you know of anyone who when they died their bank account and house went with them. Make abundance in your life a process not a thing. Let’s now consider some of the forms of abundance. Of course, there are many, but let’s just talk a little bit about three of them, money, giving, and imagination.
There isn’t space here to recount a complete history of money, but many different things have been used by humans to represent value. These have included, seashells, tally sticks, paper, debt, and metals. What we need to remember is that all money, including what we use today, are simply symbols of value. We use them because they are convenient ways for us to price and facilitate transactions, and for us to store value. But money is only worth anything because we all agree that it is. If people stopped accepting bits of paper with the Queens head on it for goods and services, then it would be worthless. Because it is worthless, unless you can do something else with it. If we all agree something has value, then that becomes money. As we have seen with the rise of crypto currencies, to which there is absolutely zero underlying value. We really can choose to define anything we like as money. And there is nothing wrong with money, just don’t horde it out of a fear of lack, flow it, use it.
How is giving a form of abundance? When we give things to other people, we often get a positive feeling. Therefore, allowing someone to give something to you serves the other person too. We are engaged in a trade, where we get something in return for the positive feeling we are enabling the other person to feel. So, accept gifts with gratitude. And receiving a gift from someone else may well enable us to do something else that we need to do too.
Everything that humans have ever done, was created twice, once in our minds and once in reality. We are hugely creative. Connect with and utilise your own creative, imaginative, power as another form of abundance. Building a strong sense of rapport between your conscious and unconscious minds is one way to do this. The creativity resides within our unconscious mind. What the conscious mind needs to do is quieten itself down to hear the unconscious. Practices like meditation can help improve this sense of connection and thereby enable your creativity to flow.
There is much work to do on our planet to transform how we live into one that better reflects our inherent abundant nature. One of the things we need to do is to redefine abundance from a thing into a process, and another is focus less on material things and more on people and the planet.
“Money won’t make you happy…but everyone wants to find out for themselves.” Zig Ziglar
